children

It might seem like a deliberately offensive question to ask, one intended solely to provoke a specific reaction, but I want you to know that I am entirely sincere when I ask it because I really would like an answer – it is said, after all, that everything has a price, and I am particularly curious as to what yours might be. Actually, “price” is probably the wrong word and the question, to be fair, is a pointedly obtuse one, so let me rephrase it. What, to you, would be adequate compensation for the rape of your child? What do you consider to be suitable recompense? What would you be comfortable accepting in return for your child being subjected to the worst kind of trauma (short of also being tortured and murdered) that they could possibly endure? Save your reply because, ultimately, whether you believe in a god or not your answer should be exactly the same: there is nothing that anyone could ever accept – nothing. The trouble is that, if you’re a theist, this isn’t actually true – it’s merely what you’ve tricked yourself into believing. If you’re honest you would admit that you do have a price – and it’s absolutely nothing. Read more “How much to rape your kid?”

Before I get too caught up in the excitement at having finally reached my 50th rant, I should let you know that this could, in all probability, be my last ever blog post. Don’t worry, I’m not doing that narcissistic, “Oh, woe is me! I can’t take this harsh, abusive, blogging world any more, I’m leaving!” bullshit; such pitiful attention-whoring, the desperate expectation that my army of drooling, lead-paint drinking followers will validate my existence and wank my ego by imploring, “Come back, please! We can’t hold a coherent thought without your constant wisdom!” No, the fact is that this trivial milestone rant says one or two things that might result in my getting killed to pieces, ironically by the religion of peace, for offending their not-at-all insecure faith, blaspheming against their religion, and insulting their prophet by referring to Muhammad, entirely accurately (at least, according to their own holy texts), as a kiddie-fiddling, molestation-happy, child-rapist. Read more “Nonce Upon A Time”

This week’s post has probably the most potential of anything I’ve ever written to cause the greatest level of discomfort and embarrassment – not just for me, but for nearly a full half of the entire human race. It’s a subject that can hardly even be mentioned without all those who happen to be both in earshot, and in possession of the requisite dangly bits, want to cross their legs while enduring a sustained moment of pained wincing at the very thought of it. As a member of the aforementioned group, I find it especially hard to raise this subject, and not just for the reasons of physical awkwardness thus far stated; my innate stiff Englishness and general inability to be cock-sure and confident when addressing such issues means I am largely incapable of standing tremendously proud when I say, in the words of Kryten, the service mechanoid from “Red Dwarf” who temporarily becomes human and consequently has many questions about his new body, “I want to talk to you about my penis”. Read more “Off with his head”

Once again I am compelled to begin my post with an apology for the complete lack of any kind of ranty, word-based intellectual comestibles over the last few weeks. I’m afraid things have been stupidly busy around here again, with a large proportion of my time spent building a website for my dad and his recently published book (go there now and buy it, particularly if you like wizards, quests, and magic, and especially if you have kids). With all the running around (well, sitting down, if I’m honest) trying to organise things – server upgrades, domain registration, installing software – getting everything set up, and making absolutely sure that the whole thing was perfect and ready in time for an immovable, near-future release date, it sometimes felt like I was involved in planning a bloody wedding. And, do you know, that gloriously ham-fisted and clunky attempt at a segue leads me very shoddily on to what it was I wanted to talk about this week? The ongoing and now, thanks to certain presidents, very high-profile worldwide campaign for LGBT marriage equality. Read more “Here comes the pride”

Despite being totally with it, up-to-the-minute, and “down wiv’ da kids” – the kind of guy people always come to for “the word on the street” when either Huggy Bear or the Highways Agency road-painting crew are unavailable – I didn’t become fully aware of the whole “Kony 2012” video phenomenon until I saw Charlie Brooker’s segment covering it on “10 O’Clock Live” on Wednesday night. As a dedicated denizen of Twitter (follow me now, you bastards!) I’d naturally heard of the video, knew what it was about, and was vaguely aware of Invisible Children, the organisation responsible for producing it, but I hadn’t looked any further into the details. As the segment unfolded, Invisible Children, and its co-founder Jason Russell, were starting to come across rather scarily like the kind of sinister, child-recruiting religious cult they were condemning Joseph Kony for running, only with fewer guns and more dance numbers. Raves and I wondered to each other how long it would be before clean-cut, god-humping, goody-two shoes Russell would be caught either huffing poppers while getting felched by a gay prostitute, or perhaps running around the street in his underwear with his cock out, wanking at passing traffic? “About 12 hours” was the answer, apparently. Read more “Stupid Cult”

Before you get the wrong idea about me, I’m not planning to use this post as a forum for expressing some kind of deep and abiding physical attraction towards christianity’s premier long-haired hippy prophet. Although the messiah is, according to some, a very naughty boy (and, under normal circumstances, I would be inclined to question therefore whether I should get to know him better), neither the more plausibly accurate, “Osama Bin Laden in his student days” image of Jesus, nor the white, WASP-ish, lightly-bearded pretty-boy that most christians falsely imagine him to look like, could ever be really described as being “my type”. No, this week’s post was inspired by a casual tweet from @Rati0nality that got me thinking about religion and popular culture; specifically, I was given cause to consider the idea, accepted almost universally as true, that “christian music is shit”. Read more “Rock me, sexy Jesus”

Every one of us has, at some point in our lives, met someone truly deserving of the label, “gobshite”; someone who, rather like a geography teacher, could speak at great length about nothing in particular. The kind of person who could bang on for hours, like a carpenter with OCD, and never say anything worth listening to. For the most part, we simply tolerate their seemingly limitless capacity for verbal diarrhoea and see it as little more than a minor annoyance – the kind of grating personality trait that we all have and others learn to work around. Occasionally, however, we’d meet a prolific purveyor of bovine faeces that cannot be ignored because they’ve strayed far beyond the realms of the irritatingly harmless and into the territory of the positively lethal; someone who can talk themselves, and those around them, into deep trouble with consummate ease. The kind of person to whom you find yourself saying “seriously, dude, you need to shut the fuck up” far too often. If you want a classic example of the “dangerous gobshite”, look no further than Jenny McCarthy. Read more “Measles, McCarthy, and Reason”